If you choose not to read this, will I get stupider?

Rejection can dramatically reduce a person’s IQ and their ability to reason analytically, while increasing their aggression, according to new research.

And:

“These are very big effects – the biggest I’ve got in 25 years of research,” says Baumeister. “This tells us a lot about human nature. People really seem designed to get along with others, and when you’re excluded, this has significant effects.”

Baumeister thinks rejection interferes with a person’s self-control. “To live in society, people have to have an inner mechanism that regulates their behaviour. Rejection defeats the purpose of this, and people become impulsive and self-destructive. You have to use self-control to analyse a problem in an IQ test, for example – and instead, you behave impulsively.”